July
2007

God-less dollars? What are they?

The United States government mint has
acknowledged the accidental release of “God-less dollar” coins.

Presidential Dollar Series Released

The first of the new
2007 George Washington Presidential dollar coins
have been released. US government plans are to release four coins per
year, featuring four different US presidents. Presidents will be
released in the order that they served as president, with George
Washington being honored on the first coin.

Picture
of Washington dollar

Presidential dollar
coins are gold in color, however they are not made of real gold.
Instead they are minted from a metal mixture that is mostly copper. Size
and metallic finish is similar to the Sacagawea dollar coin.

P and D mint mark dollars are
being released into the federal reserve banking system and are
available at many local banks. S mint dollar coins will only be available by
special purchase from the US mint.

In an unusual move,
the US mint has put the date, mint mark, and mottos such as “In God We
Trust” and “E Pluribus Unum” on the edge of the coin. The edge letters
are only visible by looking at the coins from the side.

Why the unusual edge
design? Sources close to the mint said, “Moving these inscriptions to
the coin’s edge, allows more room for the other design elements on the
face of the coins”. In other words, removing this information from the
face of the coin would allow a larger presidential design and with more
detail. The president’s portrait wouldn’t be crowded out by such things
as dates, mottos, etc.

picture
of coin’s edge lettering

One collector summed
up the coin hobby’s thinking about the writing on the coin’s edge by
saying, “It’s nice to have something new and unusual like edge
lettering.”

To produce the edge
lettering, the front and back of the coins are first stamped. After
this minting process the coins are sent through a separate machine that
impresses the edge lettering.

Missing
edge lettering – Godless coins found

A few collectors have
reported finding “God-less” dollars, coins without the “In God We Trust”
inscription or the edge lettering. Independent coin grading services
such as PCGS have authenticated some of these
“Plain Edge” presidential
dollars and now the US mint has acknowledged that they exist.

Unnamed mint officials
say that evidently one batch (or part of a batch) of presidential
dollars missed the step of going through the edge lettering machine,
thereby resulting in no edge lettering on that batch of coins.

How scarce are the God-less dollars?

Exact mintages of plain
edge dollars is unknown. They evidently are somewhat scarce. Currently
God-less, plain edge dollars (as of the time of this writing) are
selling from about $100 for very low grade plain edge errors to several
hundred dollars for higher grade certified coins.

The US mint has stated
that they will improve the production process so that such errors do not
occur in the future.